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Tuesday, 12 January 2016

IT'S TIME TO GET YOUR TRAVELLERS IN ORDER

Driving compliance has been a critical issue
for buyers for many years and, this year, it’s just as important. In fact, in
the Business Travel Show annual buyers research it was cited as the second
biggest challenge facing buyers in 2016, second only to cutting costs.

It’s an increasingly important and relevant
issue for a number of reasons, but mostly because a) buyers are still under
pressure to manage costs and get more for their organisations’ budgets and b)
technology makes is super easy for travellers to book independently and ignore
(either by accident or on purpose) policy, making it harder for buyers to
manage cost, maximise supplier relationships and also monitor travellers, which
is essential for duty of care.

Last year, 44 per cent of travel
managers did not give travellers freedom to book their own travel compared to 39
per cent in 2014. Despite the clampdown, 86 per cent continue to go rogue, 10
per cent of these on a regular basis. This is a small increase on last year’s
figure of 85 per cent.

The research
also showed a marked difference in the compliance behaviour between SMEs and
corporates. Buyers with budgets under £1 million are almost twice as likely to give
buyers freedom book independently than those with more than £1m to spend: 71 per
cent compared to 40 per cent. In 2014, these figures were 56 and 62,
respectively, implying a tightening up of processes among corporates but a more
laissez faire approach from SMEs.

Table 1

2015

£1m+

2015

£1m-

Aver-age

2014 £1m+

2014

£1m-

Aver-age

2013

2012

Do you give travellers freedom to book their
own travel?

Yes

36

9

Yes,
complete freedom

3

7

5

8

11

9

Yes,
within policy guidelines

37

64

51

54

45

50

No

55

29

42

36

37

36

No,
but we plan to

5

0

2

3

3

3

Are your travellers booking outside policy?

2015

£1m+

2015

£1m-

Aver-age

2014

£1m+

2014

£1m-

Aver-age

Regularly

17

4

10

8

8

8

Sometimes

75

78

76

80

74

77

Never

8

18

3

12

18

15

Table 2

It’s
important to remember that while traveller management, wellbeing and duty of
care are all increasingly important to buyers, their number one priority is
efficiency – if they didn’t focus on managing costs and ROI, they wouldn’t be
doing their job properly, and one of the key methods of achieving these is, of
course, through driving compliance.

This post was
written by David Chapple, event director, Business Travel Show, Europe’s
leading event for buyers, managers and booking of business travel. The event is
free to attend, taking place at Olympia Grand on 24-25 February 2016. http://goo.gl/F55mKX and features conference sessions tackling,
explaining and discussing compliance issues for buyers at all levels.